Page 45 of Burn of the Everflame

Find her, it sneered back.

“She ordered us to save her people,” I growled aloud. “Obey your fucking Queen.”

For the length of a single breath, my consciousness snapped free of my body. My senses bloomed like ink through water, hearing and smelling and tasting all that my shadows touched. I was no longer bound by bones and flesh.

I was night immortal.

I was the darkness itself.

In my storm of obsidian vengeance, I felt each life that hung in the balance. I felt their hearts hammer with the thrill and terror of the fight. Scattered among them, I felt pieces of something else. Something angry, something wrong. In the midst of all this teeming life, these were shards of inimitable death.

And one of them was right in front of my hand.

The air rushed from my lungs as I withdrew back into flesh and blood. The shadows parted to reveal the fallen godstone sword—and the mortal man.

We both lunged. My fingers brushed the blade, and it took everything in me not to recoil. The mere touch of the poisonous substance brought everything back—the grief, the hopelessness, the self-loathing, the rage, every miserable emotion that had consumed me in Umbros. Though everyone warned of the physical pain of a godstone death, it was the way the toxin had turned me angry and cruel, even toward Diem, that haunted me most.

My godhood abruptly withdrew at the godstone’s touch, and my magic dissipated to mist. The sudden disappearance of my shadows distracted the mortal, and I seized my chance.

My hand closed around the hilt, and I yanked just as the mortal dove to grab it. The blade tipped up and slid clean through his shield . . . then his torso.

He choked, staring down at his opened gut. Though the godstone’s toxin wouldn’t hurt a mortal, this was a lethal blow by any blade. I shoved the sword deeper, and the man gave a wet cough. Another sharp jerk through his ribs, and his body went still.

“Gate’s open!” a voice yelled.

My stomach flipped. When my shadows vanished, so had my illusion. The wide-open entrance was now a bright, shiny lure.

The ground began to rumble. From the edge of the surrounding forest, more mortals were emerging. Scores of them. Hundreds.

And they were led by a scowling, one-armed man. His eyes met mine and crinkled with a smile. “To the palace,” Vance shouted. “Kill every Descended you see.”

The mortals raised their weapons with a cheer. I managed to shove the gate closed before they crashed into our lines, but as I reached for the key, the impact knocked it ajar. I tried once more, and a crowd of bodies pushed me further back.

I raised the godstone sword, and I let the bloodlust consume me. My blade flew through shield, skin, and bone, freeing heads from necks and emptying entrails from gaping, bleeding torsos. Liquid scarlet painted me in carnage as I hacked at every brown eye I met.

Deep down, I knew my Queen would despise this, perhaps despise me for doing it, but something inside me had cracked. The darkness I’d been harboring since that cursed island had grown too monstrous, too unmoored, and I could not leash it—not even for her.

Black blades targeted me in return. Whether they struck, I could not say. I knew only my wrath and the death in its wake.

As mortals met their end at the tip of my blade, their godstone weapons fell abandoned to the ground. Alixe grabbed two for herself, then shouted orders at her best fighters to arm themselves and join me. Our numbers grew, and soon the mortals’ faces had turned from triumph to terror.

We pushed them back far enough to close the gates, and as I turned to lock it, my eyes again found Vance. His stare rose to the sky—to a splash of black against the sunny blue, bobbing in a steady rhythm and getting closer.

Ophiucae had arrived.

13

DIEM

Iam Diem Bellator.

I am Diem Bellator.

I glared at the Sacred Sea and repeated the words in my head with every crash of a wave on the shore.

I am Diem Bellator.

Over and over, I reminded myself who I was, but those words, that life, felt too far away to be real. When I looked back at the woman I’d been a year ago, it felt like reading a story from a book. Every aspect of who I’d thought I was had been completely and thoroughly demolished.